Supporting each other tightly as they limped along, Seraphine kept her eyes trained straight ahead. Her voice came out barely a rasp.
"Do... do you know any place?"
"Which place?" Rina asked, leaning heavily on her shoulder.
"A medical room. A clinic. Somewhere with supplies."
"There are a few spots nearby. I don't think going there's a good idea right now."
Seraphine turned her head, squinting at her. "Why?"
"Do you really think those buildings are still standing after a hit like this?" Rina shot back, her face ghost-pale beneath the grime.
"We don't have a choice." Seraphine's jaw tightened. "We need to treat your ankle, or you won't be moving at all."
Pain spiked up Rina's leg with her next step. She let out a ragged breath. "Fine. I know a couple of spots. Let's try."
The horror around them mirrored the devastation across the whole campus. Bodies lay buried under collapsed masonry. Further up, students had been crushed flat under fallen slabs. Rina gagged, stomach turning, and squeezed her eyes shut, clutching Seraphine harder to keep from throwing up.
They cut toward the back of the campus, steering around the rear of the cafeteria. Far from the dorms and lecture halls, the area held no survivors at all, and the trail of bodies thinned out the further they went.
"Where is it?" Seraphine asked, patience thinning as her shoulder throbbed.
"Almost there. Just a little further," Rina whispered.
They rounded a corner and stopped dead.
Ahead of them stood the location — except it wasn't a building anymore. Where the structure had been, there was only a heap of pulverized concrete and drifting gray dust. Flattened entirely.
They stared at the pile in silence.
Seraphine turned, looking at Rina with hollow, exhausted eyes. "This was your place?"
Rina managed a bitter smile. "It was."
Seraphine let out a long breath, shoulders sagging. Rina caught the defeat on her face and forced herself to rally. "Don't look like that, Sera. I know one more spot."
"...Okay." Seraphine's expectations were already at zero.
A few agonizing minutes later they reached a small, isolated outbuilding, barely bigger than a bedroom, tucked behind the athletic fields.
"Not a medical facility," Rina said, leaning against the wall as they stopped outside. "We use it for sports gear. There's first aid stock too."
"Inside, then."
The building had survived almost untouched. No padlock, the latch gave easily under Seraphine's hand. They slipped in, shutting out the ruined sky behind them.
The interior sat pitch black except for thin orange light bleeding through the wall vents. Stagnant dust hung thick enough to set them both off sneezing.
Equipment filled every foot of space — basketballs, footballs, shuttlecocks, wooden bats, racks of gear. Tucked in the corner among it all sat a few red first aid kits.
As her eyes adjusted, Seraphine spotted a stack of plastic chairs against the far wall. Before reaching for them, she turned back and threw the bolt on the door, sealing it shut. Only then did she pull two chairs down and set them facing each other.
"Sit."
Rina blinked at the flat, sudden authority in her voice. "Huh?"
Seraphine just gestured at the chair. "Sit down. We need to wrap your ankle."
"What about your shoulder?" Rina's eyes went to the bloody makeshift bandage soaking through Seraphine's sweater, still seeping red. Compared to a broken ankle, that looked far worse.
"Sit down." No room for argument in it.
Rina let it go. She lowered herself into the chair and lifted her leg onto the other one.
"I'll deal with mine after," Seraphine muttered.
She knelt on the dusty floor and cracked open a first aid kit, hands trembling slightly as she pulled out tape and gauze, working to immobilize the swollen ankle.
Hissed breaths filled the small room.
"Ahhh..."
"It hurts," Rina ground out, rigid in the chair.
"Stay still. Almost done." Seraphine didn't look up.
The minutes dragged for Rina, but Seraphine worked fast, wrapping the joint tight enough to hold the bone in place. Not a professional job. It would hold for now.
Once Rina was set, Seraphine turned to her own wound, peeled off the blood-soaked cloth, dressed the gash with antiseptic and clean wraps. Rina reached to help; Seraphine brushed her off, pulling the bindings tight herself.
When she finished, she slumped back against the wooden wall and closed her eyes, drained.
"What do we do now?" Rina asked quietly.
"I don't know." Seraphine didn't open her eyes.
Rina couldn't sit still with that answer. She gritted her teeth and hopped up on her good foot, heading for the door. "Let me check if anyone's out there. Maybe there's help "
"Sit back down." Seraphine's voice was dry. "You're not healed."
"I heard something," Rina murmured, ignoring her, pressing close to the door frame. She leaned in toward the narrow ventilation slit near the edge and looked out.
What she saw turned her blood cold.
In the dim, reddish light spilling across the field, a figure crouched low over something on the ground.
It was eating.
Rina stared, her mind refusing to process it at first. The skin was mottled gray, the features slack and wrong in a way no living face could be.
She recoiled, foot catching, and hit the floorboards hard. Nausea rolled through her and she clamped both hands over her mouth to choke down a scream.
"S-Sera..." Her voice came out ragged, her whole body shaking. "There's...there's something out there."
Seraphine cracked one eye open, too tired to want this right now. "What is it?"
"Th-there's a...a zombie-like thing. Outside. It's eating someone."
Seraphine blinked. "What?"
"I saw it. Please, look!"
With a groan, Seraphine pushed herself up, limped to the door, and pressed her eye to the slit.
Her face drained of color. "What the hell is that?"
"A zombie," Rina said from the floor. "I told you."
"How is that even possible?"
"After everything else that fell out of the sky?" Rina's voice came out weak. "I don't think logic applies anymore."
Barely twenty meters from the door, the thing kept tearing into what was left on the ground. The wet sound of it carried faintly through the quiet.
"How are we getting out of here," Seraphine muttered, more to herself than anyone.
Rina's head snapped up. "Are you serious right now? That's a monster. If it catches us — bites us then we turn into one of those things!"
"We can't stay locked in an equipment shed forever, Rina."
Rina opened her mouth to argue and found nothing to say. She knew Seraphine was right. It didn't make the fear let go of her any easier.
"For now, keep quiet." Seraphine cut the argument off before it could grow. "We rest first."
She crossed to a heavy wooden cabinet against the back wall.
"What are you doing?"
"Help me move this. We're blocking the door."
Rina pushed herself up and took the opposite edge. Grunting with the effort, they dragged the cabinet across the floorboards and shoved it flush against the entrance — a solid wall between them and whatever was out there.
"Now we rest." Seraphine wiped sweat from her brow with the back of her arm.
"Okay." Rina sank back down against the wall.
They sat shoulder to shoulder on the dusty floor, letting their eyes close. Before either of them could drift, a sharp, crystalline chime rang out inside their skulls.
Ding~
Rina jolted upright. "Wha...what was that? Sera, did you hear that too?"
"I heard it." Seraphine's eyes were wide, scanning the dim room.
Before either could react, the air in front of them shimmered. A translucent blue light gathered into a floating rectangular panel, and glowing text began writing itself across the surface in real time.
Both girls sat frozen, lit pale blue in the dark.
Ding~
---------------------------------------
⛧ [INITIATING GLOBAL BROADCAST…] ⛧
[System Channel: Prithvi Mandala — Planet Designation: Earth]
Source: Core Seal of Prithvi-Lok — Unsealed After 432,000 Earth Cycles
⛧ — THE TRIAL OF KALI YUGA HAS BEGUN — ⛧
The Dharma Wheel lies in ruin.
❖ The Four Sacred Yugas have withered into ash: Satya, Treta, Dvapara, and Kali, consumed by time's hunger.
❖ And now... a new epoch emerges from their remains.
❖ Now dawns the Fifth — the Unspoken Yuga...
→ The Age of Rot.
[System Activation: Universal Evolution Protocol]
All sapient lifeforms are now subjected to the Trial.
Those unable to resonate with the Etheric Flow — Prana (Mana) — will be Dehumanified.
All hail the almighty Blight.
Let the Apocalypse descend.